


Nesting: Part One

by babybasschick96



Series: Nesting [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Bat Family, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-08 14:32:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5500928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybasschick96/pseuds/babybasschick96
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim and Kon have a fight.  It's up to the bat boys to help Tim feel better after Kon leaves for a mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Fair warning: this is set in the alpha/beta/omega universe. This is also my first alpha/beta/omega fic, so please cut me a little slack if I’m off a little bit on the dynamics and/or terminology. As well, this is a multi-chaptered fic. I have it planned for 4 chapters (including the prologue) and have the first two written and edited already. The third is written as well, I’m just finishing up editing it and will hopefully have it out in a week or so. As for the fourth chapter, I have bits and pieces of it written and hope to have it finished within a week or so of posting the third chapter (depending on how things go with my holiday plans and whether or not I actually ended up breaking my wrist last weekend (cause having it casted will kind of slow me down a bit)). I own nothing. Posted to fanfiction.net as well. Thank you for your time!

“Timothy, I don’t know!” Kon threw his hands up in the air. “It’s not my call!”

“Yes, it is!” Tim repeated himself for what felt like the hundredth time. “You don’t have to go!”

“Yes, I do!” Kon argued, letting his hands drop back down to his sides with an exaggerated ‘thump’.

“No, you don’t!” Tim shook his head. “The team is more than capable of taking care of it without you!”

“No, they’re not!”

“Yes, they are!”

“No, they’re not!” Kon felt like screaming. “Clark asked me to go, so I’m going, and that’s final!”

And then, before Tim had any kind of a chance to make some kind of a comeback or argument, Kon was out the window and flying away. Streaking off through the sky towards Metropolis like Tim hadn’t just given him a hundred or so good reasons as to why he shouldn’t have jumped to appease Clark’s every whim and need—not the least of which was the fact that Clark didn’t approve of the dynamic of their relationship and had no issues laying into Tim about it the last time he had seen him.

So what if Tim was still close to his family and refused to lock himself away under a rock for the sole entertainment of Kon? He might be an omega and he might have agreed to let Kon mark him as his mate, but he was still a _person_.

Tim found his mind drifting farther and farther down that rabbit hole as he stood staring out the window long after Kon had disappeared from sight. Still, the argument played over and over in the back of his mind as he tried to come to terms with what just happened, but no matter how hard he tried he just couldn’t understand why Kon had left.

Tim wasn’t sure how long he stood there just thinking before he finally sighed and turned away from the window towards the door. The tears had dried on his face a long time ago, but he still uncrossed his arms and rubbed a hand over his face as he reached for the blanket hanging over the back of the arm chair by his bed. He’d already slipped into a sweatshirt by the time the discussion between him and Kon had escalated into an argument, and Tim wasn’t going to bother switching his pajama pants out for jeans before he headed down stairs for breakfast. He didn’t have any plans to leave the house for the next couple of days thanks to the mandatory leave Bruce had put him on from both Red Robin and his responsibilities with Wayne Enterprises after having not one, not two, but _three_ near-death experiences in the last week (even by their standards of near-death experiences), and jeans just seemed like a waste of laundry for Alfred.

He was cold though, so instead, he grabbed the blanket and draped it around his shoulders like a cruel interpretation of the cape he wore every night, and let it’s warmth and the faint smell that was distinctly the Manor wash over him and calm him as he headed down the hallway to the stairs and then into the dining room and kitchen after that to start his day.

 


	2. Chapter One: The Boys

Everybody in the family knew that Tim was a nester. He’d been that way for as long as they’d known him. Even before he truly started presenting as an omega he liked being wrapped up and surrounded by things that reminded him of his family. That was part of the reason why he’d adopted the long, thick, Batman-like cape for his Red Robin uniform (aside from the obvious strategic advantages it gave him…but Dick thought this was a little ridiculous.

“Um, hey, Tim?” he made his presence known after a couple of minutes of silently staring as he swallowed thickly.

“Huh?” Tim’s head snapped up from his laptop screen to where Dick was hovering in the doorway of the Manor’s media room.

“Is something wrong?” Dick took a step into the room as he looked Tim over with concern, but hesitated on the second step and didn’t come any closer.

“Why would you think that?” Tim frowned and furrowed his eyebrows back at his eldest brother.

“Well,” Dick shifted his weight between his feet and rested his hands on his hips subconsciously. “For one, Alfred is making mac n cheese, which he never does unless one of us has been shot—which none of us have, I checked—or having relationship issues, and for once, Jason and I are actually doing pretty well; so, that leaves you, Bruce, or Damian. And two, I’m pretty sure that’s the biggest nest I’ve ever seen. There’s no way it can be a good thing.”

Tim had the decency to blush a little bit at that, but really he wasn’t all that bothered as he followed Dick’s eyes to the mass of blankets and clothes and pillows that he’d collected around himself and moved from room to room with him throughout the day before he settled into the media room sometime late in the afternoon, “It’s not that big.”

“Yes, it is,” Dick nodded his head, not taking any of Tim’s dismissals of his concern. The nest that Tim had built around himself covered the entirety of the couch and spilled over off of the front and the sides to the ground beneath it. “You have half the Manor wrapped around you, Tim.”

“I was cold,” Tim pouted, looking back down at his laptop so he wouldn’t have to look up at Dick and meet his eyes.

“So, why didn’t you just turn up the heat?” Dick asked rationally as he took another step forward, but Tim fell further back into his nest.

“You know what Bruce is like with the thermostat,” Tim glared up at his eldest brother defensively as he readjusted the blanket around his shoulders and pulled it tighter around himself with one hand. “I didn’t feel like getting my head chopped off.”

“Bruce would have understood if you were that cold,” Dick rolled his eyes, finally coming to stand in front of Tim and look down on him. “What’s really going on here, baby bird? What aren’t you telling me?”

The two stood and sat there (respectively) for a couple of minutes as they glared at each other and tried to size each other’s willpowers up, but after a couple of minutes Dick’s stubbornness won out, and Tim cracked, looking back down at his laptop.

“Kon and I had a fight this morning…”

Dick took the confession in stride, pausing a minute and letting his first couple of responses filter through his head before he finally settled on staying quiet and waiting for Tim to explain, because he was obviously missing something.

Tim and Kon fighting in and of itself wasn’t anything new—they were by no means as loud or as volatile as Jason and Dick, but they did disagree often enough that an argument between the two wasn’t exactly surprising either—and neither was Tim being slightly more emotional than not afterwards. That was why when the Manor had slowly woken up earlier that morning, none of it’s other occupants had hesitated to make quick work of their morning routines before heading off to whatever their other responsibilities for the day. But they were never like this.

Tim and Kon’s arguments were typically more the two of them blowing off steam at each other than anything else.

“…and he left without saying good-bye.”

“You mean for that mission with Clark into space?”

Slowly, Dick was starting to get it.

“Yeah,” Tim nodded his head.

“Oh, Tim—“ Dick’s heart broke as Tim let out a stifled sniff and brought a hand up to wipe the tears off of his face. Before Dick really knew what he was doing he was sliding the laptop off of Tim’s lap and putting it on the table in front of the couch, and pushing aside the blanket’s on Tim’s right side so he could slide into the warm nest beside his brother. “—C’mere.”

Shoving the blankets and miscellaneous pieces of fabric over was much easier said than done—Tim had them all obsessively threaded in and out of each other and packed as tight as they could possibly get to each other _and_ around him, and batman only knew what he had stowed away in the folds that Dick couldn’t see—but after a minute or two of finagling it, Dick managed to make a him-sized whole, and settled in beside Tim, wrapping his arms around the smaller boy and pulling him closer as he guided him up into his lap.

“It’s going to be okay, Timmy,” Dick soothed over Tim’s tears and not quite sobs as he reached up to run a hand through his little brother’s hair as he tucked Tim’s head under his chin. Dick tried his best not to use any of his alpha voices or methods on any of his brothers (except for Jason, when he wanted or needed it; but that was a whole other arrangement entirely), but he was pretty sure that was what Tim needed at the moment. “We’re still here. We still love you.”

The two stayed like that for quite a long time, Tim finally letting it all go while Dick held him through it. At first it felt nice for Tim to finally decompress, but the longer it went on, the more he convinced himself that this was the end of the world.

“That’s it, Dick,” Tim reached up to wipe at his face once again, the tears finally stopping as he resigned himself to his fate. “We’re done. Kon’s done. I’m twenty-three years old and my mate has already rejected me. I’m useless.”

“No, you’re not,” Dick resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he looked down at Tim. The younger man had slid back down to the couch so he could look up at Dick while they talked, but his legs still remained draped across Dick’s lap, and Dick squeezed one of them reassuringly. “You don’t even know that Kon is going to reject you yet. It was one fight.”

“Yeah, about his father, and me refusing to back down and be a proper omega for him,” Tim snorted somewhere between indignant and defeated.

“Not every alpha wants their mate to back down and be a “proper omega”, Tim,” Dick reminded Tim with a patient smile and a small bump of his shoulder that was lost to Tim as he reached forward and started fidgeting with the nest around them.

“Well, no,” Tim conceded reluctantly as he tucked the blankets closest to him back around him, then reached up to smooth the blankets beyond them so Tim still had a clear sight line to the door if he stretched up a bit.

Dick’s eyes followed Tim’s hands as he worked, and he finally got a better look at the nest around him. It was even more massive than he’d first thought, with how tightly Tim had packed everything. This one was mostly various fabrics, based on what Dick could see and feel (not all of Tim’s nests were), but he had felt a couple of harder lumps when he had been moving things around earlier and Dick knew Tim well enough to know that he had hidden at least his top three favorite books in the folds somewhere as well as some pictures, if not more.

Dick was also pretty sure that one of Damian’s swords was currently digging into his side under the blankets, but he wasn’t going to ask.

The smell that was coming off of the nest was almost as impressive as the size of the nest itself. A beta wouldn’t smell it, not really, but Dick could pick out all of the individual scents on the couch like a bloodhound, and could almost understand why Tim nested the way he did. Jason wasn’t one much for nesting outside of his heats, and Bruce’s urges manifested in keeping the Manor and the Cave in order instead of actual nesting, but Dick could definitely see the appeal and why it calmed Tim as much as it did. As it was he could smell the scents of Tim, Bruce, Alfred, Damian, Jason, and himself enveloping them in their own little bubble of safety (as well as hints of Cassandra, Steph, and Barb) and Dick was pretty sure if he closed his eyes long enough, he could convince himself that they were all actually there.

There was one other faint scent, mixing in with all of the others, but Dick couldn’t find any obvious signs of where it was coming from. He supposed it could be coming from Tim himself, he and Kon spent so much time around each other that it wouldn’t have surprised him if other hormones and things clung to Tim even if they hadn’t scented recently, but Dick had a feeling it was more than that.

Little did Dick know, there was a small pile of Kon’s things—the blanket the alpha preferred, a pillow from the living room couch he frequented when he was at the Manor, a stuffed animal he’d bought Tim along with a box of chocolates and a bouquet of flowers their first Valentine’s together, the t-shirt he’d worn last Tuesday, and a small plethora of his other clothes that were left at the Manor—hidden under the blankets and other things to Tim’s left. Tim had spent the hours before Dick had arrived clutching them to his face and breathing in the scent as deeply as he possibly could before shoving them away a couple of minutes later and burying them under all of the other scents in the nest so that Tim couldn’t smell them, only to pull them back out again fifteen or twenty minutes later and start all over. The scent was simultaneously comforting and heartbreaking to Tim, and he was terrified to find out which one was going to win out in the end.

“But they are certainly fewer and farther in between than those that do, and if Kon felt that way; then, why did he leave?” Tim’s agitation was increasing once again as he fussed with the nest, reaching over Dick to practically beat the pillows and blankets on Dick’s other side into submission as he talked. “Why didn’t he take me with him?”

“I don’t know, Timmy,” Dick shook his head and sighed as he grabbed Tim’s sides and gently but firmly coaxed him back into his seat, ignoring the indignant huff that passed through Tim’s lips. “But fretting over it isn’t going to do you any good—“

“Says who?” Tim protested, struggling against Dick’s hands, but to no avail. “Would you let me go?”

“No,” Dick tightened his hold, hugging his brother tighter. “You need to calm down and relax.”

“No, I don’t,” Tim huffed as he continued to squirm.

“Yes, you do,” Dick held his ground and kept tightening his grip until Tim finally stopped fighting and sagged back against his side.

“Fine,” Tim pouted once again, crossing his arms underneath of Dick’s.

“Good,” Dick gave a pleased little smile at himself as he settled back into a more comfortable position again.

“But I’m not going to like it.”

“Never said you had to,” Dick didn’t argue, reaching to rearrange the blankets a bit himself from where they’d been pushed away with Tim’s fighting. “Are you still cold?”

“…A little bit,” Tim answered after a minute, huddling back into his sweatshirt and pulling the sleeves down over his hands.

“C’mere then,” Dick said as he pulled a blanket (one that looked suspiciously like Dick’s childhood comforter) from the nest and tucked it around Tim’s body. “Might as well get comfortable if we’re going to be here all night.”

“What do you mean?” Tim looked up at him in confusion, but didn’t fight other than to fuss with the blankets closest to him.

“I mean I’m not leaving you until I know you’re going to be okay, and you’re not going to be okay until Kon comes back and you two talk it out, so we might as well watch some TV and cuddle while we wait.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Tim felt tears in his eyes once more as he shook his head, but for a completely different reason this time.

“Yes, I do,” Dick nuzzled the top of Tim’s head for a minute before he pulled away to reach over for the remote on his right before settling back beside Tim. “Now, what do you want to watch? Horror, drama, fantasy? A good RomCom?”

“Not RomCom,” Tim shook his head before letting it fall back against Dick’s shoulder comfortably. “Or horror.”

“Bad action movie then?” Dick offered, flipping through the online catalogue of their movies.

“That’s fine by me,” Tim agreed, humming his approval quietly when Dick finally chose something.

The two sat in silence for a couple of minutes, just watching the opening credits of the movie before Dick happened to take a look around the nest and opened his mouth in disbelief and confusion.

“Is that my Robin cape?”

“Maybe,” Tim blushed and refused to meet Dick’s eyes.

Two movies, three and a half shared giant bowls of mac n cheese, and what felt like a hundred bad fight scenes later, Tim and Dick’s atmosphere of serenity was finally broken again. Alfred had been in and out several times throughout the evening, bringing the young masters food and drinks and anything else they asked for, but he had been quiet and nearly unnoticeable every time. He had spent the entire day with Tim, so he knew what was going on, and he also knew that the best thing for Tim at the moment was to simply relax where he felt comfortable and stay calm until his mate came back and they figured this whole misunderstanding out.

Dick was aware of Jason’s presence before Tim was, but that wasn’t uncommon. The two had exchanged a handful of text messages to cancel their plans for dinner and redirect Jason to the Manor after he was done with his work for the day, so he knew when he was on his way. Luckily, it was only Jason’s second day off of his heat and the two still had a couple days of scheduled “vacation” left to recuperate, so Dick hadn’t had to reach out to Bruce to try to explain things to him and convince him to let Dick have the night off to babysit Tim. Jason took a little longer than expected (he’d been sidetracked in the kitchen by Alfred), but Dick was listening for him and his scent preceded him into the room as he made his way down the hall, and Dick would know that scent anywhere.

“Hey, Jay,” Dick gave his mate a soft smile overtop of Tim’s head as he came into the room, and Tim tried not to let it bother him too much. There had been plenty of times where he and Kon had been absolutely unbearable, but Dick and Jason had put up with the two of them anyway.

And there Kon was again.

Tim stifled a sigh as the tension drained from Jason’s shoulders and a small smile graced itself upon his lips at the slight of his lover camped out on the couch with their younger brother before he looked around and his brain processed what exactly was going on around them.

“Get cold earlier, did you?” Jason raised his eyebrows at Tim before bending down and pressing a chaste kiss to Dick’s lips.

“Maybe,” Tim grumbled and glared at the wall as Jason and Dick had a quick whispered conversation about how their days were and what had taken Jason so long upstairs, trying not to blush.

“Seriously, Tim,” Jason said as he straightened back up and turned his attention back to him. “What’s going on?”

“Kon and I had a fight,” Tim pulled the sleeves of his sweatshirt down over his hands as he avoided meeting Jason’s eyes.

“And he still left for that mission with the League?”

“Yeah…”

“Ass hat,” Jason managed to growl out before Dick’s foot collided with the side of his knee. “Ow—hey! It’s true!”

Jason glared down at Dick, but Dick glared right back, “Could you at least pretend to be sensitive, babe.”

“Pretend to be sensitive?” Jason raised his eyebrows and brought a hand up to his chest in mock indignation. “Pretend to be sensitive? I _am_ sensitive, _babe_. Sensitive to the fact that Kon is an ass hat and that ditching out on working out your problems by going into space is a dick move.”

“Well, you’re not wrong there,” Dick conceded with a hum before he remembered they were supposed to be trying to help Tim and distract him from all matters revolving around Kon. “But, still. Try to be sympathetic.”

“It’s fine, Dick,” Tim sighed before looking back up at Jason. He was more than used to Jason and his Jason-ness by now, and to be quite honest, a small part of him had really enjoyed Jason’s reaction. Tim loved Kon with every fiber of his being, but he really could be an ass hat sometimes and ditching out on your problems by going into space _was_ a dick move (even if their Dick would never do such a thing to one of them). “I’m guessing I’m going to have just about as much luck getting you to go away as I did with Dick?”

“Just about,” Jason nods, looking back over at him.

“Come on, then,” Tim rolled his eyes and grunted as he reached down to push the blankets and things from his free side, toppling some of them over and off the side in the process.

“Oh, thank you, little bird,” Jason grinned, clearly having expected more of a fight than he got.

“Yeah, uh-huh,” was the only response he got as Tim continued to rearrange things to make enough room for Jason. “Take your shoes off.”

“Kinky,” Jason chuckled (earning twin dull glares from Tim and Dick), but reached down to unlace his boots nonetheless. “You guys need anything before I sit down?”

“No, thanks,” Tim shook his head, ignoring the fact that Jason had said anything else in the first place. “I’m good.”

“Dick?”

“I’m good, too, love,” Dick’s face melted back into that same happy little grin he had when Jason first came in.

“Awesome,” Jason commented off-handedly before turning around to settle down in the whole that Tim had made him. “What are we watching?”

“At the moment?” Dick shifted so that the arm that was around Tim was touching Jason’s shoulder, too. “The Princess Diaries.”

“Really?” Jason’s face lit up in interest just a little bit as he wormed his own arm between Tim’s back and the couch, shifting Tim so that his head was rested between Jason’s shoulder and chest with his back pushed up against Jason’s side and his legs were still stretched out over Dick’s lap. “Which one?”

“The second.”

“Oh, boo,” Jason frowned as Dick reached for the remote and started to rewind through what they talked over. “The first one is so much better.”

“Hey,” Tim titled his head up to glare at Jason even as he relaxed and got comfortable using him as a pillow. “No knocking my choice in movies when I’m having an existential life crisis—and no making out with your fiancé either. You two love each other; we get it. I don’t need anymore reminders of what I’m losing, thank you very much.”

Both Dick and Jason made a show of picking on Tim and reaching over and touching each other as much as they possibly could (and smashing a whining and yelling Tim in between the two of them as they shared a ridiculously obscene kiss over his head) before they all three settled back down on the couch again, but Tim knew it was all in good fun, especially when Jason wrapped his arms around Tim’s shoulders and chest and buried his nose in Tim’s hair and whispered, “Of course not, Timmy,” as Dick hit play on the movie.

Damian joined the trio about three and a half hours later, after The Princess Diaries had turned into old cartoons from the boys’ childhoods. All three of the eldest boys had expected Damian to come in at some point after he and Bruce had gotten home from patrol, yelling and throwing a fit about the state of the rest of the Manor or the fact that Tim had taken his things to line the nest with, but to their surprise, Damian leaned against the doorway assessing the situation with one eyebrow raised and his arms crossed across his chest for a moment before he pushed himself up and made his way over to the couch where his brothers were still in pretty much the same position that they had been all evening, the only difference was Tim’s cheeks were almost permanently wet now as he sunk into the comfort his brothers were offering him, and the amount of tissues at his feet had increased ten-fold.

“Is the Kryptonian being an idiot, again?”

“Ass hat is actually the term we all agreed on, but yes,” Jason answered him, pausing the show as all three of the boys on the couch started pushing at the blankets so there would be enough room for Damian to join them if he’d like. “The Kryptonian is being dumb, again.”

“Wonderful,” Damian scowled, toeing off his slippers, at the same time Dick reached up to cuff Jason along the back of his head, “Language.”

“Richard, I was raised by assassins,” Damian rolled his eyes, reaching down to pull the blankets off of his older brothers’ laps, utterly confusing more than one of them until he sat down in Tim’s lap and unceremoniously sprawled out over all three of them with his head in Dick’s lap and his legs in Jason’s. “Believe it or not, I have heard the words “ass hat” before.”

“That doesn’t mean we should be encouraging you to use them,” Dick shot back robotically, just like he always did whenever the conversation came up (and it came up pretty often).

“Tt,” Damian made that disapproving noise of his but let the matter drop without further argument when Dick’s fingers made their way through his still shower-wet hair. “I take it you were in the middle of something before I came in here?”

“Just watching an old cartoon,” Jason answered him as Dick, once again, rewound the show back to before they’d been interrupted. If any of them heard the quiet sniff that Tim gave as Damian’s hand found his under the blanket and squeezed, none of them brought any attention to it for the moment.

“Fun,” Damian hummed noncommittally. “Let’s get back to it then.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Dick murmured, resting his head against Tim’s as he hit play and the sounds of cartoon antics washed over them once again.

 


	3. Chapter Two: Bruce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the comments and kudos and bookmarks and hits and everything else! They're really really appreciated! Having said that, here is Chapter Two (although really, it's more like Chapter 1 Part 2)! I hope it lives up to your standards and expectations!  
> As far as when I will be updating next: I’m still working on the last chapter, and unfortunately it’s going much, much slower than I hoped it would. Not only am I having issues with my wrist still, I’ve run a fever for the last week and my doctors are worried I might have an infection in one of my vital organs (woo-hoo!). Sooo, I have no idea how long it’s going to take me to get the last chapter of this finished, but I promise I’ll have it up as soon as I get it done! Thank you for your patience and understanding, I really appreciate it!  
> As always, please, let me know what you think :)

Bruce’s entrance was a little more dramatic, coming an hour or two after Damian had joined them, but no more or less welcome than any of the ones that had come before it.

“Um—hey, guys?” his voice echoed in from the hallway even before he’d made it to the doorway. “Does anybody know what happened to my…bed sheets?”

Bruce’s words fell off in shock as he stopped in the doorway and took stock of the scene before him. All four of his boys were piled out on the couch—a miracle in and of its self, seeing as it didn’t seem like any of them were trying to kill each other—or what Bruce assumed was the couch, because he couldn’t see any of it underneath all of the blankets and clothes and…and… _Bruce’s bed sheets_ piled on top of it. The first emotion that flicked through Bruce’s mind after the confusion had started to ebb some was anger (what the heck were his bed sheets doing down here? And what about all of this other stuff? What were his boys thinking—making this kind of a mess?), but something deep inside of him told him to slow down and take another look, and the annoyance thawed almost as quickly as it came.

There, settled between Dick and Jason with Damian over top of all three of their laps, was Tim, looking smaller than he had in years in his oversized sweatshirt, and even though Bruce didn’t know exactly what was going on (cut him some slack, he’d been busy lately), he deduced that he was missing something (and something big and probably revolving around Tim and Kon’s relationship—from the looks of it), and that now wasn’t the time. Tim nested whenever he was upset, and it wasn’t his fault that he gravitated towards things that smelled of his pack and his mate to help him calm down.

If anything, Bruce was flattered and humbled by the fact that Tim had wanted something that was so saturated in Bruce’s scent that he’d sought out the man’s bed sheets…even if he did feel a little awkward standing in the doorway to the media room in just his boxers because he’d collapsed into bed minutes before, only to realize a couple minutes later that something was missing.

“Oh; hey, Bruce,” Dick forced out in a falsely cheery manner once he had gotten past his own surprise at the situation, a voice that clearly said _Bruce, don’t say anything dumb to screw this up, we’re all actually getting along, and now is not the time to try to hash out all of our differences, not when Tim needs us_ (as if Bruce hadn’t already figured that out). “How’s it going?”

“Um, fine?” Bruce raised one eyebrow at Dick as if he was unsure whether that was the right answer or not. The beaming smile he got in return told him that yes, it was. “How is everything in here?”

If the immediate darkening of Dick’s face was anything to go by, that wasn’t what Bruce was supposed to say, but Bruce’s eyes left his and went to Tim’s, and Tim didn’t seem to be much more affected by his words than anything else he could have said.

“It’s good,” the voice that sounded throughout the room surprised Bruce. While he and Jason had worked out the worst of their issues over the years (his and Dick’s mating hadn’t helped things at first, but even Bruce had to admit after a while that there were no two people in the world better for each other than Jason and Dick; it unsettled him a little bit every now and then, but he was also eased by the knowledge that the two sons he’d spent so many sleepless nights worrying over due to their unconventional wants and needs had found somebody who could give them what they wanted and needed in life, even if those some ones had turned out to be each other), but they’d also come to an understanding long ago that things were better when the two didn’t talk beyond what was absolutely necessary to complete missions or communicate vital information for the family. For Jason to speak to him now was…interesting. “Timmy here was just feeling a little bummed out from a fight he and Kon had earlier, so we were trying to cheer him up—or, well…at least keep him distracted.”

“Oh,” Bruce took a second to process all of that, blinking a few times as he realized just how much he had been missing lately. Maybe Alfred was right when he said Bruce needed to take some time off to just focus on catching up with the family for a couple of days. He thought everything between Tim and Kon was fine. They were one of the happiest and stable-est couples that Bruce knew.

(And maybe Jason actually cared a lot more about the family than he let on.)

“I’m sorry you and Kon had a fight, Tim. What was it about?”

Bruce hadn’t realized, but he had taken a couple of steps into the room and crossed his arms as he spoke, stopping just a couple of steps away from the couch on Jason’s side. Dick looked like he was about to reprimand Bruce for asking such a question and kick him out of the Manor for a week or two as punishment, but Tim just let out a small sigh and cut him off.

“Thanks, B,” Tim tried to give him a small smile, but he failed miserably, and Bruce frowned. “And it was nothing really, just about how Clark doesn’t approve of our mate-ship and that I didn’t like him going out of orbit on a mission without me. Kon just left before we could figure it out, and I don’t know where things stand between us.”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce apologized again, his voice uncharacteristically soft. It was obvious that Tim and the boys had been expecting anger and protectiveness from the older man, and weren’t sure what to do with what they’d gotten instead. Tim’s eyes snapped up at the tone, locking on to Bruce’s, but instead of feeling better, he just felt even worse at the special treatment he was receiving. He didn’t know why—couldn’t have explained it if you’d asked, but he did. “Is there anything I can do? Do you want me to talk to Clark?”

“No,” Tim shook his head quickly, urgently, before he closed his eyes and forced himself to take a deep breath. “Thank you, Bruce; but, no, I don’t want you talking to Clark. This is between Kon and I, and the least amount of people I can get involved, the better it will be for everyone.”

“Okay,” Bruce nodded his head after a minute, deciding to take his second youngest son’s lead on this. “But if you change your mind, let me know.”

“I will,” Tim reassured him, even though they both knew that Tim would never feel comfortable asking something like that.

“Okay,” Bruce repeated himself before the room fell silent for a couple of minutes. It wasn’t awkward per say, but it was clear that three of the four younger boys in the room were waiting for Bruce to make his excuses and leave (while the fourth just kind of sat there, looking as lost as he had the day he found his parents dead). It was Dick who cleared his throat, grabbing Bruce’s attention, and snapped Tim out of his trance like state. Bruce glared down at Dick (who glared back just as stubbornly), and Tim’s eyes flickered between the two of them before he jumped in his seat and hurried to start pulling the nest apart.

“Oh, Bruce, I’m so sorry,” Tim rambled, much to the confusion of most of the other members of the room (Bruce, Jason, and Dick) and the chagrin of the one that expected it was coming eventually (Damian, as the cocoon of warmth and blankets he had made around himself fifteen or so minutes after he’d laid down was mostly stripped away). “I completely forgot I took your blankets. I went in your room with Alfred earlier to help clean your bathroom and the scent just kind of pulled me in. It reminded me of when I would crawl in bed with you when I was younger and I couldn’t resist. Here, take them back. I’ll wash them tomorrow so you or Alfred don’t have to—“

“Drake!” it was Damian who finally pulled out his alpha voice to get Tim to stop when Bruce, Jason, and Dick trying to get his attention other ways had proved to be useless. Tim’s head snapped around to where Damian’s voice had come from, and froze in his tracks as his eyes met with icy blue.

“Damian,” Bruce said his youngest son’s name as a low warning, but Damian ignored him, already having the situation well under control.

“Calm down,” Damian laid a reassuring hand on Tim’s where it was clenching the blankets in a death grip, and it took a moment for everybody to realize that Damian had already reverted back to his normal tone as Tim surprisingly relaxed back against the couch again and released his hold on the blankets obediently.

Normally, when Damian tried to use his alpha voice over Tim it was because he was annoyed, and he frequently abused the power, causing Tim to bristle and argue at even the barest hint of it, but it was evident by the look in Damian’s eyes that the only reason he had resorted to it now was to help try to save Tim from himself instead of for his own gain, and Tim was more struck by that knowledge than he had been by the tone in the first place.

Jason had tensed indignantly—just the way he always did whenever any alpha pulled out their alpha voice (excepting Dick, but even still, everybody knew that Jason could have resisted Dick’s alpha voice if he wanted to, too; it was only because of the longstanding trust between the two of them that Jason didn’t fight his body’s natural reaction to the man), and Dick glared down at the boy sprawled across his lap disapprovingly. Bruce had simply fallen back into his stone-faced emotionless self for a moment before relaxing once again after he saw the rest of the exchange between his sons.

Damian held Tim’s gaze for another couple of seconds, giving his elder brother time to recollect himself and prioritize all of the things that he was feeling, before he gave his hand another reassuring squeeze and tilted his head the slightest bit in Bruce’s direction. Damian and Tim let their hands fall apart as Tim looked back up at Bruce, significantly calmer than he had been a moment ago, and once again the question of what exactly was going on between his son and his son’s mate crossed Bruce’s mind as he realized he’d never seen Tim in quite this desperate of a state before.

The realizations that clearly Alfred had been right when he said that he wasn’t paying enough attention to his family and that regardless of whatever Tim’s wishes were he _was_ going to have a _conversation_ with a certain _Kryptonian_ about why— _exactly—_ Kon-El was the single _luckiest_ person in existence for having caught the attention of one Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne _regardless_ of whatever societal roles they were _“supposed”_ to be in, crossed his mind as well, but Bruce filed them away for the moment.

Instead, Bruce tried to stay calm and not scare Tim off.

“I don’t care about my blankets, Timothy,” he repeated the same words he’d been trying to get Tim to hear while he’d been freaking out a minute ago, soft and understandingly. “Do you mind if I join you?”

Tim’s surprise was evident on his face, but after a couple of seconds he shook his head, and Bruce gave a small smile, as he too moved the blankets aside so he could settle down on the couch beside Dick, with Damian’s head in his lap. It wasn’t exactly where he wanted to be given the circumstances—he would have preferred to be sitting next to Timothy, blocking the path between him and the door, and touching every one of his sons in at least some form or another (not to mention they all would have been much more comfortable cuddled up in one of the giant beds upstairs)—but Bruce was willing to take it, and he might have even done some fussing with the blankets of his own as they all adjusted to the changes in position the latest addition to Tim’s nest had brought about.

“Everybody comfortable?” Dick sighed once most of the shuffling and shifting had settled down.

There was a chorus of confirmations from the rest of the couch as popcorn bowls were settled back into laps and Jason and Dick both cuddled up to Tim (whether Tim wanted them to or not), and Tim reached up to wipe his eyes once again before he nodded his own.

“Yeah,” his voice was rough and scratchy from all of the crying he’d been doing throughout the evening, but the corners of his mouth turned up nonetheless. He really appreciated what his brothers and father were doing for him, even if it wasn’t as affective at distracting him as they hoped it would be. “Would you mind rewinding the movie for me? I missed what happened.”

“Not at all, baby wing,” Dick returned his small smile as he reached for the remote yet again. “We can rewind it as much as you want.”

“Thank you, Dick.”

“You’re welcome,” Dick reassured him, pressing a kiss to the top of his head as he did so. The family lapsed into amiable (if not a little awkward) silence as they waited for Dick to find where they’d left off in the movie, only for it to be cut short by a happy little exclamation from Jason.

“Oh, hey!” everybody turned to look at him as he tilted his head and reached for a grey sleeve that had fallen out of the mess of the walls of the nest somewhere in the whole sheets/bedding scramble. “Timmy, is this my old Gotham Academy Sweatshirt?”

“Yes,” Tim practically squeaked in response, shrinking in on himself as his face and ears and neck turned bright red.

“I haven’t seen this in forever!” Jason seemed genuinely happy at his discovery. “Where did you—“

“Don’t ask,” Dick cut him off in a deathly serious voice with a shake of his head. He and Tim had been through this earlier, and that was not a path he wanted to go down ever again. “Trust me, Jay. Tim is terrifying and vigilant and thorough and a little kleptomaniac. That’s all you need to know.”

Jason was about to argue, mouth opened and all, but then he looked between Dick and Tim (who was pretty much just a sweatshirt at this point with the way he was burying himself into Dick’s side), and decided against it at the last moment. The last time he could remember having the sweatshirt was when he’d lost it on a school trip to the zoo back before he’d died, and suddenly he really didn’t want to know how long it had been in Tim’s possession or what his younger brother had done to get his hands on it in the first place.

 


	4. Chapter Three: Kon Comes Home

It was three more agonizing days before Kon and the rest of the League finally got back to the Watchtower, and another sixteen hours before they headed home. The mission that they had gone on was strictly diplomatic, but the two alien worlds they were mediating between were notoriously fickle in their allegiances to other entities, and the League had been just as worried that they were going to turn on the League as they were worried about them turning on each other. Normally, Batman and his clan’s presence would have been non-negotiable on such a mission, but with Dick and Jason being in less than pristine condition as they recovered from Jason’s heat (and later Tim’s benching due to his particularly hard week while the two had been out of commission), even Bruce had to agree that the mission was too dangerous for them to run or even be an active part of.

He didn’t like admitting it—admitting he or his family were vulnerable was one of the hardest things for him to do—but his family and his pack’s safety was ultimately his highest priority. So, when Ollie had approached him in private when the mission had first come up about two weeks before the League had left, Bruce had relented and promised to stay out of it.

Bruce and the boys didn’t spend the entire time cooped up in the Media Room with Tim like they had wanted—unfortunately, almost all of them had jobs they had to attend to eventually (except Damian, although he made several appearances at WE Headquarters to make up for Tim’s absence along side Bruce) and the streets of Gotham wouldn’t patrol themselves in their steed while they dealt with a family crisis, and the girls could only do so much—but they’d all made sure that Tim wasn’t left to his own devices for too long either. At any given time at least two of them were at the Manor with him and available if he wanted company (or down in the Cave—again, they still had jobs to tend to), and every night who ever wasn’t on patrol retired back to the Media Room (or Bruce’s bedroom, after Jason and Alfred had convinced Tim that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for them all to cram themselves onto the one couch every night when there were a dozen or so clean beds upstairs that were more than big enough to fit all of them up on the higher floors) to cuddle with Tim and try to help make him feel safe and secure enough to get some sleep, even if they knew he wouldn’t stay relaxed enough to do so for very long.

Thankfully, Dick and Jason’s various bosses (Dick had several levels of management he had to go through down at the precinct in order to avoid being forced to work over time, and Jason worked two civilian jobs outside of his vigilante-ing) were incredibly understanding with the whole situation, even if they might have been under the impression that Tim’s illness was more of a contagious/physical one, and not a heartbroken/mental one, and Damian’s sudden new attitude change towards Tim seemed to be sticking around, at least for a while. Nobody in the family had any idea how to explain it, other than maybe his alpha instincts were leading him to be more protective of an omega who was considered a part of his pack while he was under duress, but they weren’t really questioning it that strenuously either because it was such a nice change from their usual bickering.

Certainly, the two youngest of the pack had gotten along much better the older they got, but Jason and Dick at least were worried that if they asked too many (or any) questions they were going to jinx it or scare Damian off and it was going to be right back to the way it was before and that was the last thing anybody wanted. Damian actually spent more one-on-one time with Tim than anybody else throughout the whole ordeal, other than maybe Alfred (because he never left the Manor unless he was going down to the Cave or out to the store to get groceries) or Dick, but that was only because Dick had gotten to Tim first, and he’d still had the second and third day off from work because of Jason’s heat. Jason had been given those days off, too, but he’d spent most of his time resting and recovering himself, and Tim could hardly hold that against the other alpha.

As it was, even with the continued distractions, Tim wasn’t very distracted, and he spent more time over the four day span silently crying and burrowing himself into one of his brothers’ (or adoptive father’s) sides as they held him, than not. The one saving grace for Tim, and the rest of the family, was that he had never been a particularly loud crier, but that was little comfort to Bruce or Dick or Alfred when they found him hunched over the kitchen sink on the third day—retching his guts out from dehydration and malnutrition while Damian hovered worriedly beside him, holding the elder man’s hand tightly in his right as he ran his left over Tim’s back in what was clearly intended as a comforting gesture.

It wasn’t that Tim hadn’t been eating. He had. It was just no matter what he ate, everything made him sick to his stomach, and his body just wasn’t allowing anything to stay down anymore.

Dick had flown to Tim’s free side immediately, adding his own worried comforts in with Damian’s as they discussed Tim’s well being over his head as if the middle child wasn’t even there, while Bruce and Alfred had headed off in their own separate directions to prepare a makeshift hospital bed up in Bruce’s room and grab the necessary pharmaceutical supplies from down in the Cave.

Somewhere along the lines, Tim’s dry heaves finally stopped, and Dick hadn’t hesitated to pull the boy back from the counter and cradle him to his chest, even though Tim still had vomit around his mouth, tears on his face, and sweat in his hair and temples. Tim sagged over into the embrace bonelessly, and Dick held him close, pressing soft kisses to the crown of the omega’s head as he rocked the two of them from side-to-side. The three had remained like that for a couple of minutes—Damian’s hand on Tim’s back as Tim cried and whimpered into Dick’s chest, while Dick and Damian shared worried looks over his head—until Alfred and Bruce returned from the depths of the Manor together, telling them that Bruce’s room was ready.

Tim pushed away from Dick at the sound of their arrivals, and quickly wiped at his face to try to recompose himself. He wasn’t very successful (he still had dried vomit on his chin, and he was shaking too hard for anyone to believe he was alright), but the rest of the inhabitants of the room let him have his pride and didn’t mention it. Alfred and Bruce led the way back through the kitchen and down the hall, and Tim tried to follow them, but he only made it halfway across the massive kitchen before Dick shook his head and scooped him into his arms before Tim could do anymore damage than was already done.

Dick settled the smaller man into the downturned covers of Bruce’s bed—freshly laundered from their quest down to the Media Room—and crawled in beside him to pull the younger omega closer as the other three set about wiping the sweat and grime from his skin and accessed one of the veins in Tim’s arm to start the IV fluids to rehydrate him before any permanent damage was done.

Tim had stayed there for the remainder of that evening and into the next, and was only allowed back downstairs for dinner after his vitals had stabilized and he’d taken a couple of naps. Even with all of Alfred’s stipulations and Damian’s arm to lean on, Tim was only able to make it about two-thirds of the way down to the Media Room, and Jason had to carry him the rest. Tim was more or less left alone for another half-hour or so after that as everybody went about finishing out their own responsibilities for the day, but they’d all made sure somebody was there to check on him at least every three or four minutes, and he was only able to eat about half of the scrambled eggs Dick had made him before he’d had to set the plate down in fear of losing his stomach again.

Alfred had frowned when he’d wondered back into the room and noticed the green tinge to Tim’s face as he eyed the plate on coffee table like it had bit his dog, but still, he was leaps and bounds better than he had been, and all parties involved were convinced that there was some kind of twenty-four hour stomach-bug or something involved due to the severity of Tim’s symptoms, so, Alfred had resisted the urge to say anything.

For the moment…

“Alright,” Jason let out a deep breath as he inspected the food on his plate and settled down next to Tim—a generous portion of grilled chicken (already cut into manageable slices by Dick, because he was the worst mothering hen any of them had ever met and had a tendency to go a little bit overboard sometimes (but it was okay, because he fully admitted and accepted that fact)), roasted broccoli that actually kind of looked good to Tim (courtesy of Jason and Alfred sharing recipes since Jason has been out on his own), some mashed potatoes with steamed green peas, various colored bell peppers, and green beans mixed throughout (another Jason Todd Original), and wild rice stacked in-between (largely for the benefit of Damian and his mostly-vegetarian diet (unfortunately, he was unable to maintain his physique and physical regime as he grew older without the aid of consuming either meat or artificial supplements—at least on occasion—and given the choice between the two, Damian had decided on the all-natural option (even if he did insist on raising the animals himself on the Manor’s grounds so that he knew they were well fed, well taken care of, and didn’t suffer any unnecessary pain upon their departure from the living world)) with a couple of dinner roles resting on the edges because Jason was a tank and still recovering from his heat—and Tim was torn between being envious that Jason could eat so much and honestly being a little repulsed because of the way it all made his stomach turn. “What’s on the bill for tonight?”

““The bill”?” Tim couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows at Jason in shock (and a tiny bit of disgust) as his brother shoveled a bite of chicken into his mouth.

“You know,” Jason shrugged after he’d quickly swallowed his bite as he speared another piece of chicken with his fork. “The bill…the brochure; the itinerary; the circuit—the _marquee_. It means what are we planning on watching—“

“No—I— _Jason_ , I _know_ what it means,” Tim huffed and punched Jason’s arm in frustration, but he barely even jostled the food on the plate in Jason’s hand, and Jason just laughed. “I _meant_ why the hell were you phrasing it that way? Nobody’s talked like that since the Reagan Administration.”

“That is so not true,” Jason protested back, voice significantly higher than usual, before Dick cut in from where he’d settled on Tim’s other side.

“He’s got a point, Jay—“

“Hey!” Jason turned his attention from Tim to Dick and Tim couldn’t help but look on in amusement.

“—You talk like an old man.”

“I do not!” Jason continued to protest.

“Yes, you do,” Dick reaffirmed his statement calmly (if not a little smugly), taking a bite of his own mashed potatoes and lolling his head to the side so that he could see his husband-to-be overtop of the fluff of Tim’s hair. Jason’s shoulders dropped in response, and his bottom lip pushed out into a pout as he met Dick’s gaze, and Tim’s eyes fell back down to Jason’s plate, because no matter how sick to his stomach he was, for some reason the broccoli was just calling out to him—

Or maybe it was the smell of the garlic mixed in with the olive oil that beckoned him so sweetly…

Either way, Tim had long since lost track of the conversation going on around him when a third voice caused his head to snap around.

“Um, are you sure that is a good idea, Drake?” one of Damian’s eyebrows was quirked up near his widow’s peak, and Tim was confused as to what he was talking about. “I am all for you eating more food, especially something with some color to it, but is that really what you want to start out with?”

“What?” Tim furrowed his eyebrows at the younger man standing across the room with his plate in one hand and a remote in the other, half-raised like he was in the middle of doing something to the TV when he’d spoken up. A quick scan of the room out of his peripherals told Tim that everybody else was staring at him, too, but before Tim could really process that, his eyes followed the flick of Damian’s down to somewhere around his own collar bone, and he quickly solved one mystery as another one showed up on his metaphorical desk.

He hadn’t realized he’d done it, but somewhere along the lines he’d reached up and grabbed a piece of the broccoli off of Jason’s plate and had it halfway to his mouth.

“What?” he repeated the question again, but this time his attention was directed towards the vegetable in his hand instead at of one of his brothers. “How did I…I don’t remember grabbing that.”

“Well, you did,” Damian shifted his weight from one foot to the other, eyeing Tim’s form wearily, like he was looking for other symptoms of Tim’s illness to manifest that Tim himself didn’t even know about. “I watched you. And like I said, I am all for you eating more food, and far be it from me to try to tell you what you should and should not do, but maybe you should slow down a bit and let your eggs settle before you try to eat anything else.”

And that argument seemed reasonable enough to Tim. He had spent the last twenty-four hours puking his guts up, and if there was one thing Tim hated it was puking (but then again, who was fond of the action in the first place?), and the rest of the family nodded and murmured their own approval of the plan as Tim nodded his head and set the piece of broccoli back down on Jason’s plate, “Yeah, you’re right, Dames. Sorry, Jay. I just can’t seem to think straight right now with all of the hormones flying around.”

“That’s alright, baby bird,” Jason played it off as if nothing happened, scooting a little bit closer to Tim as Tim sunk back into the couch again, but Tim could see the concern in his eyes when they flicked up to hold Dick’s for a second before they turned back to himself. “I’ll save what’s left over after we’re done eating, and maybe one of us can heat it up later if you’re hungry and feel like trying it then—okay?”

“Yeah,” Tim nodded his head after a minute. “Yeah, okay. That sounds good.”

Things proceeded rather normally after that, or well, as normally as things ever got for the Wayne Family. Damian settled himself into one of the armchairs to eat, only to get up after he was finished to go to the bathroom and come back and plop himself down in between Jason and the armrest of the couch. Bruce had chosen to take the couch that was parallel to the door for himself, but his eyes stayed resolutely glued to the movie screen in front of them, and Tim was pretty sure he’d caught him nodding off a couple of times when he thought nobody was watching.

Tim alternated back and forth between using Jason’s shoulder as a pillow and curling up into Dick’s side, but either way, they were both happy to hold him, and for the first time they’d gotten him to go more than an hour or two without crying, as his stomach tolerated and mostly processed the eggs. All in all, it wasn’t that bad of a night, and Tim could have almost pretended that there was nothing out of the ordinary for a moment there as Jason scratched gently at the back of his head, until a light breeze blew through the house, bringing a new scent with it.

“Mmph,” Tim let out a little noise of distress as he smelled it. His body was instantly torn between being excited by the presence and the instant rush of pheromones, and being absolutely terrified of whatever was about to come, and Tim couldn’t help but hate his body’s natural responses because no matter what he did he couldn’t make sense of what his body was trying to tell him.

Thankfully (or unthankfully, depending on how you looked at it), the sound of footsteps followed the scent much faster than he had anticipated, and it wasn’t very long before Kon was coming into the room, concern and confusion set clearly on his fatigued face.

“Hey, guys? Have you seen Tim? I looked upstairs, but… _Tim_?”

Everything about Kon’s posture fell as his eyes scanned the room and he caught sight of Tim huddled in between Dick and Jason.

“…Hi,” Tim squeaked, twiddling his toes uncomfortably underneath of the blanket spread over his lower half.

“Tim?” Kon asked again, squinting like he wasn’t sure what he was seeing as he took a couple of steps into the room. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I—I—“ Tim tried to tell him that he was all right—that everything was fine and the last couple of days had never happened—but deep down inside he knew it was a lie, and if there was one thing he couldn’t do it was lie to Kon.

“He’s fine, Kon-El,” Bruce cut in when it became clear that Tim wasn’t going to be able to get out anything else other than ‘I’. “He’s just a little upset right now…because of your fight.”

“Fight?” Kon furrowed his eyebrows as his eyes flicked back to his omega. “What fight? Oh—you mean the one we had before I left? That was nothing! I mean, yeah, it was a little heated, and yeah, I said some things I shouldn’t have, but… It was just—we had a small disagreement! It wasn’t anything to worry about. It just—I just…”

Kon floundered for a moment as he tried to figure out what Bruce was talking about, and then explain when he did, but it very quickly became evident that he was obviously missing something so he let his words trail off as he stared at Tim. It was quiet after that, the room staring in between a still shocked-looking Superboy and their son/grandson/brother who was sitting on the couch and looking anywhere he could but up at the alpha who was watching him with a look somewhere between confusion and hurt.

“What’s going on?” Kon spoke up again after a couple of moments of silence, after it became apparent that Tim wasn’t going to speak up or bridge the distance between them—changing tactics as he slowly started to come to terms with the fact that there was something more going on than just a tiny disagreement between the two of them, like he’d thought. “Hmm? Why are you so upset or mad at me, or whatever it is? I know you’re upset that I went, and I know you don’t like what Clark said, but—“

“It’s not that I’m upset that you went, Kon,” Tim sighed, reaching up to run a hand over his face tiredly as he did so. He’d thought they’d finally gotten the nausea under control what with the whole eggs thing, but his stomach was doing flips in belly again, and the last thing Tim wanted to do was have a repeat of the last thirty-six hours or so. “Or that Clark said what he said about me. It’s that Clark said what he said, and he said it because you aren’t happy with me, and then you turned around and ran off after him like he’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened, and it’s just…it’s just… _you didn’t tell me you loved me before you left_.”

Tim finally huffed in an indignant, self-driven annoyance at his own inability to just _tell_ Kon what was going on in a calm, coherent manner. It was easy—no, it wasn’t _easy_. _Easy_ wasn’t the right word. It was _simple_. Kon had gone off and left Tim at home feeling unwanted and unwelcome, and he wasn’t—alphas weren’t supposed to _do_ that. They were supposed to stick around and help their omegas through stuff. Defend them against the world, and hold them when they were cold, and shower them with love and hugs and kisses, and Kon hadn’t done that. He’d just…he’d left. Opened up the window and flown off after Clark like he promised he never would. And that…Tim didn’t know how to handle that.

Kon had promised. Tim had so many issues with trusting people, and it was understandable considering everything he’d been through, it really was, but Kon had promised that he didn’t mind dealing with Tim’s idiosyncrasies, and that he would always be there for him no matter what happened, but…he hadn’t. He’d left. And Tim didn’t know what that had meant.

“I—“ Kon automatically opened his mouth to say something—to argue with the first part of what Tim had said—but then the last of Tim’s words seemed to hit him, and he stopped, head tilting to the side as he seemed to regard Tim in a new light. “That’s what’s bothering you about this whole thing?”

“I—“ Tim tried to speak again, but as it seemed, he was back to not knowing what to say, and his words trailed off just as quickly as Kon’s had—overwhelmed with everything that was happening and the uncertainty as to what his future held.

“Tim,” Kon spoke his name for the fourth time since he’d been home, a silent command with encouragement accompanying it this time, and Tim found his shoulders falling as the urge to comply was too compelling for him to fight.

(Never mind the fact that he was just too tired to even try.)

“Yeah,” Tim nodded his head, tears blurring his vision as he looked down to pick at the edge of his blanket in dejection and shame. Why did he have to be so weak? “You always tell me you love me before you leave, even when we’re fighting, but you didn’t the other day…”

“And you think that means I don’t love you anymore?”

Tim didn’t look up—in fact, he didn’t look at anything. Just squeezed his eyes shut and wished it all away as he felt the tears burn their way down his cheeks once again. He’d been doing so well—hadn’t cried in…seven hours at that point, and here he was. Blubbering like a baby over the fact that his boyfriend hadn’t told him he loved him before he’d gone off to save the world. How pathetic was that? _Very_ , Tim answered himself, scoffing internally as he once again resigned himself to his fate and started planning out how he was going to go about the rest of his life miserable and depressed without his alpha and—

“Tim,” Kon gave a frustrated sort of fond sigh, and seconds later he was kneeling on the ground in front of Tim, looking up at his mate. He reached up to grab at Tim’s face, to tilt it up so that Tim had to look at him in return, but stopped when another hand slipped on top of Tim’s from one side and a low-pitched growl came from the other.

“Oh, no, you don’t, alpha,” Jason moved in between the two of them protectively as Dick tightened the hold he had on Tim’s waist and glared over Jason’s shoulder at the Kryptonian. “You don’t get to do any of that chemical-calming, physically-pacifying, thought-manipulating bullshit. Not here; not now. If you want to talk to Tim, that’s fine. As long as he’s okay with it, you can talk to him all you want. But until he’s more comfortable with you mentally, you’re not allowed anywhere near him physically. Do you understand me?”

Kon wanted to argue—he’d tensed the second that Jason’s lips had pulled up in a snarl—but even his Kryptonian superego was screaming at him to back down and take what he’d been given, and he’d reluctantly obeyed the request. Jason was a natural born fighter, and super strength or not, Kon knew he wouldn’t be able to take him down without receiving his own fair share of injuries, and a quick flick of his eyes to the left and the right confirmed that Jason wasn’t alone in his opinion on the matter. Neither Bruce nor Damian were in their uniforms either, but Kon knew for a fact that Bruce had weapons hidden all around the house, and Kon doubted that Damian went _anywhere_ without at least five different weapons strapped to various parts of his body, even though he really didn’t need them to inflict damage on anything (and Kon was also pretty sure that at least one of them was made of Kryptonite given the curtain situation between himself and Tim and Clark).

Not to mention, Kon had a very strong gut feeling that if he even so much as managed to give Jason a paper cut on his pinky finger, Dick would go semi-feral and unleash a storm on the world and Kon that made a tempest look tame, and Kon just wasn’t ready to deal with that—not when there was another, less terrifying option.

The thought of Tim’s reaction to a fight between his mate and his pack—and more importantly, his _family_ —was painful enough to the alpha without all of the added fears it carried, and Kon found himself nodding his head slowly as his eyes flicked back and forth between Jason, Dick, and Tim, and he forced his arms to relax themselves slowly.

His instincts wouldn’t allow them to fall back down to his sides completely. Every fiber of his being that wasn’t yelling at him to avoid starting a fight with Jason or the other Bats were screaming at him to touch Tim—to reach out and comfort him and keep him from ever crying again; so, he proposed an unspoken compromise between the three of them by tentatively placing his hands overtop of where he knew Tim’s knees to be under the blankets instead.

Both Jason’s and Dick’s jaws tightened as Kon’s hands landed on Tim’s knees—Jason had very explicitly said _no touching_ —but it was very evident that the touch was unimposing and more in the vein of keeping Kon sane than to really affect Tim in anyway, and the two relaxed back into the couch in much the same way that Kon had, remaining poised and ready to intervene if necessary, but retreating to the sides to let Tim and Kon talk without interruption for as long Tim wanted or felt was necessary.

“Timothy,” Kon addressed him again, one last time, turning his attention back to the weepy omega in front of him— _his_ weepy omega. “Look at me, please.”

Tim did as he was told after a second of quiet contemplation, and Kon felt his heart sink even farther down into his stomach at the pain he saw in Tim’s eyes when Tim finally complied.

“Sweetheart, I love you more than anything else in the world,” Kon had the urge to reach up and caress Tim’s face, to push up on his knees and press his lips against Tim’s in the most loving kiss he could muster because Tim— _his_ _Tim_ should never cry, not like that, not because of Kon—but Kon resisted the urge because he knew he needed to say the words bouncing around in his head, and more importantly he knew that Tim needed to hear them without worrying about Kon having ulterior motives. “One argument isn’t going to change that. _Nothing_ is ever going to change that. I realize it was dumb and reckless of me to not make sure you knew how I feel about you before I left a couple of days ago—especially considering what I was going off to do—but I promise you, love…I didn’t mean anything by it. I just wasn’t thinking. We had been fighting, and I was frustrated because I felt like you weren’t hearing me, but I promise you, Tim. _Promise_. I love you. I came into this relationship with you with my eyes wide open, _knowing_ what I was getting myself into, and I wouldn’t change a thing about you to save my life. I don’t care what Clark says or what he thinks, or what anybody else cares about or thinks. This relationship—this _thing_ we’ve got going on between us—it’s between us, Tim. Not us and Clark, or me and your Dad, or you and Cassie. Just us. Timothy Jackson Drake, and Conner Kent or Kon-El or whatever the hell else you want to call me. Nothing else— _nobody else_ matters except us when it comes to this relationship and how we treat and feel about each other. Do you understand me?”

It took a minute, and Kon hadn’t even realized that Tim’s hands had slipped between his and the blanket and urged Kon up farther onto his knees like he’d wanted to be, but pretty soon, Kon was relaxing as he watched Tim nod his head, and blink back a fresh wave of tears, “Yeah—yeah, I do, Kon. I understand.”

“Are you sure?” Kon’s eyebrows rose to his hair as he looked his mate over, squeezing the hands in his even tighter because there was nothing that was more important to him than Tim understanding what Kon was talking about and just how much he meant it. “Because I don’t understand how you could ever think that I—“

“Yeah, Kon,” Tim cut him off, a fresh wave of tears slipping down out of his eyes as he pulled his hand from Kon’s, only to reach up and caress the side of Kon’s face before he leaned forward to press his lips against Kon’s. “I’m sure.”

And suddenly, all Kon could feel was the repeated press of Tim’s lips against his own, and the rest of the family looked away as Tim made a high-pitched noise in the back of his throat and struggled to get out from underneath of his blankets and in between Dick and Jason to get closer to Kon.

“I’m sorry,” Tim apologized once he’d finally managed to get up onto his knees with his chest pressed flushed with Kon’s (with Kon’s help of course). One of Tim’s hands was down in the space between Kon’s chest and his neck, and the other was still up by Kon’s face, fingertips brushing over Kon’s skin reverently. Kon, for his part, had one of his hands on Tim’s hip to help steady him, and the other was wrapped back around Tim’s waist to help support his weight and hold him close, and Kon was more than happy to fall into those beautiful, light blue eyes staring back at him as Tim leaned forward to kiss him again. “I’m so sorry, Kon.”

“Don’t be,” Kon shook his head, shifting the hand at Tim’s hip up to his face, to wipe at the tears that were still falling—and without thinking Tim nuzzled into the gesture. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

Tim wanted to argue—it was clear in the way his jaw clenched and his eyes dilated as he continued to take in Kon kneeling in front of him—but then he was relaxed again and closing the short distance between the two of them to press his lips back to Kon’s.

“I’m sorry I was such a jerk,” Kon pulled away to rest his forehead against Tim’s.

“You should be,” Tim teased, lips finally pulled back into a ghost of his usual smirk, and Kon just… _beamed_ at that. “But it’s okay—“

Tim leaned forward to press another kiss to Kon’s lips, this one much shorter and calmer (though no less loving) that the last.

“—I forgive you.”

“Thank you,” Kon’s lips settled themselves into a smile, even as he kissed Tim’s nose—making him giggle and smile a watery smile of his own—before he pulled back just enough that he could rest their foreheads together and look down at Tim, voice pitched low as he spoke up again hopefully. “You want to maybe, um, go upstairs, and spend some time together…?”

“Yes—“ Tim nodded his head immediately, fingers slipping up to grip at the collar of Kon’s shirt in a gesture that very clearly said, ‘yes—get on with the super speed, you don’t mind,’, but then, just as Kon’s face lit up and a fresh new wave of heat spiked through Tim’s body, Kon’s stomach gave a loud growl that could be heard around the room, and Kon winced as shock flashed across Tim’s face before he started smiling and giggling once again. “—But apparently _you_ don’t.”

“No, I _do_ ,” Kon pouted, huffing a bit as he glared up at the ceiling and life in general. “But I haven’t eaten in like…four days, now—“

“What?” Tim cut him off, eyebrows furrowing in concern, as he looked over Kon again—taking more detailed notes of the dark circles under his eyes and the worn state of his t-shirt and his appearance in general. “What do you mean you haven’t eaten in four days? Conner—“

“One of our storage units was damaged on landing, and none of us trusted the food that the aliens offered us,” Kon explained quickly with a sigh, reaching up to run a tired hand through his hair as he did so. “We had more than enough for Ollie and the rest of the League to eat, but Clark and I fasted so they were at full power and capacity in case something happened—“

“Conner,” Tim frowned unhappily, brain already working through calculations he didn’t want to make.

“Yeah, I know,” Kon reached up to sooth him with a hand (which had Jason frowning again, but he didn’t say anything, so Tim figured Kon was in the clear). “But it needed to be done, and I just wanted to get through to the signing of the treaty so we could come home, and I could get back to you.”

“That doesn’t excuse you not eating for four days,” Tim reprimanded him, but there wasn’t any heat in his voice as he did so.

“He’s right, Kon-El,” Bruce finally spoke up, a frown pulling his own features down as he regarded the meta on his floor. “That was reckless—reckless on all of your parts…hey, Alfred?”

“Yes, Master Bruce?” Alfred answered him from where he stood by the door.

“Would you be willing to go grab Mr. Kent something to eat and bring me my tablet so I can get in contact with the League and find out why they didn’t contact me about this in the first place?”

“Of course, Master Bruce,” Alfred answered him, remaining stoically poised as he turned to address Kon himself. “Is there anything in particular you would like, Master Kent?”

“Um, meat?” Kon answered, obviously abashed at and unused to the coldness the butler held in his posture. “I don’t care what kind, just…meat. And maybe a baked potato or something?”

“I believe that would be possible,” Alfred acknowledged his request with a single light nod of his head. “Would you have a preference as to what I bring you to drink?”

“No,” Kon shook his head, squeezing Tim’s knee just a bit as he did, just to have something to do with his hands. “Water or tea would be fine, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all, Master Kent,” Alfred answered, and even though his posture was still stiff, his voice was a tad bit fonder than it had been earlier, and Tim would take that as Alfred turned around and started making his way back towards the door. “Would anybody else like anything while I am making the trip?”

There was a chorus of ‘no’s before Tim piped up worriedly, “He needs some vegetables, too, Alf.”

“Yes, Master Timothy,” Alfred humored him.

“Like the broccoli would be good,” Tim called, pushing up onto his knees to see over the side of the nest on the couch as Alfred continued to walk away. “And maybe some applesauce, too?”

“Yes, Master Timothy,” Alfred repeated himself in an exasperated tone, and Tim let out an indignant little huff as he fell back down onto his butt. He mumbled something under his breath, not too long afterwards, but the rest of the room dutifully pretended that they hadn’t heard when they’d caught onto the gist of what he was saying (and understood he didn’t mean it).

“Come on, Tim,” Kon chuckled, and Tim gave a contented sigh as he leaned forward to press a kiss to Tim’s cheek. “Why don’t you come sit with me over on the other couch and your brothers can curl up here and we can finish watching whatever it was you were watching while I eat, okay?”

“Sounds good to me,” Tim agreed, squeezing Kon’s hand before something occurred to him and he jerked back to look around the room. “That is—as long as you guys don’t mind.”

“Us mind?” Dick spoke up from behind him as he leaned over into the gap that had been left by Tim towards Jason.

“Of course not,” Bruce added with a small smile of his own.

“Just no more making out with your boyfriend,” Jason grimaced, but his eyes sparked with mirth as he poked Tim in the side, and Tim knew he was only picking on him because of the things he’d said in regards to Jason and Dick’s usual displays of affection. “Because the next time you kiss him, I’m going to start keeping track and demanding compensation in the form of kisses from _my_ fiancé, and I really don’t think you’re going to like that. At all.”

“Oh, please, no,” Damian made a face at Jason before turning to Tim pleadingly. “Please, don’t subject me to that. I will rip out my eyeballs and then all of our work in Gotham will be for naught.”

“Don’t worry, baby bird,” Tim grinned, silently accepting Kon’s proffered hand, before it fell as he struggled up off of the couch—losing his balance a couple of times and getting caught in the blanket as he did so, only standing up completely after both Dick and Jason had moved to help him and Kon had stood up in front of him to basically support all of his weight. “ _Nobody_ wants…to see…that.”

“Oh, screw you,” Jason pinched the back of his thigh, but there wasn’t much bite to his words as Tim finally settled to his feet.

“Um, Tim?” Kon questioned with an odd edge to his voice.

“Yes?” Tim looked up at him expectantly, chin tipped up and their height difference blaringly obvious with Tim barefoot on the floor, and Kon being…Kon.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” he raised his eyebrows down at Tim.

“Huh?” Tim’s eyebrows furrowed for a moment, before it dawned on him what Kon was asking—what Kon had just noticed—and he looked back down at their conjoined hands near his ribcage sheepishly. “Oh, um, yeah, about that… I kind of, um, haven’t been feeling good the last couple of days, and we’re pretty sure I’ve had some sort of stomach bug the last like thirty-six hours or so.”

“A stomach bug?” Kon’s eyebrows rose even farther as he continued to stare down at Tim, but the omega just looked back up at him innocently, like he’d just told Kon that the sky was blue or Bruce was the only logical explanation for who Batman was, and Kon let that go on for a moment or two before he finally just sighed and reached down to scoop Tim up into his arms—ignoring Tim’s squeak of surprise as he did so. “Timothy Jackson, what am I going to do with you?”

Kon didn’t wait for a response, even as a light chuckle ran through the rest of the room, and Dick and Jason started sharing quips and comments back and forth between themselves as the tension in the room broke, and Tim ignored them in favor of nuzzling down into Kon’s shoulder as Kon carried him over to the empty couch with it’s back to the door and fell back on to it with a sigh. It didn’t take very long for Tim to get his bearings and scramble off of Kon’s lap, but he was back a second later, curling up into Kon’s side as somebody—Damian—threw him a blanket from the other couch.

His and Kon’s mate-ship wasn’t a traditional one, but it was _theirs_ , and Tim wouldn’t trade that for the world. Neither would Kon—or anybody else in the family—and while it would take a couple of days for everything to go back to normal, and a little longer than that for the whole thing to be forgotten, it _would_ go away, and eventually it would all be a funny story for one of them to tell the next generation of superheroes or whoever it was that would come along and take over their legacy, and nothing cemented that fact for any of them more than when Bruce finally turned the conversation back to Kon to get a short debrief on the mission while Jason and Dick gave Damian a hard time over on the couch with the nest, and Alfred came back into the room a couple of minutes later with a tray laden with food for Kon.

They weren’t perfect, and they still had a lot of hard times ahead of them, but Tim loved Kon, and Kon loved him, and that was more than enough.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But Wait--


	5. A Note and an Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> —There’s More!  
> So, first of all I’m sorry for taking so long to update this. I’ve had some pretty serious medical things going on this past year, and that has made it hard for me to write consistently. I appreciate your patience, and I really hope it’s been worth the wait for you (Sorry, if it wasn’t—I tried!). Having said that, though, when I’ve had the chance I have greatly expanded this universe at the partial suggestion and complete encouragement of somebody who will remain nameless for now, and I now have about two hundred and eighty more pages for you to read. All of that has already been written, so it *shouldn’t* take me more than a couple of days in between updates, but it still needs to be edited, because it was largely written out of order (part of the reason I haven’t posted any of it before now). There are some minor changes to the mythos and family dynamics that have come with expanding this universe, but I’ve tried my best to bridge the gap between what you’ve already read and the things I have added in the last year as I explored this universe more and more. Another part of the reason I waited so long to post this last chapter was I wanted to make sure that the continuity between the two parts flowed as best as they could.  
> However, having said all of that, I completely understand if you’re not ready to make that kind of time or emotional commitment to this piece of work and want to jump ship before you get yourself even more invested in the story! Thank you for coming along with me this far on the journey, and please feel free to swing back by in time you get a chance! You’re always welcome!  
> I will confess that there are still more story arcs that I wish to explore in this universe beyond what I have written, and hope that I someday will, because I’ve had more fun writing this than I have doing pretty much anything else in a really long time, but there are other shorter fanfiction universes that I want to take to some time to explore, and I’ve neglected my personal works for far too long while I’ve shaped and crafted this.  
> The next piece that I’m going to add to this collection is actually a flashback, not a direct continuation (sorry!), but I think it gives important insight to those things like the mythos of the universe and some of the backgrounds of the characters as I have written them. This website makes grouping all of the different parts together, and I have now created a series. Alongside that, every title will start with “Nesting” followed by a brief description (much like the “Part One” I’ve added to this piece) so that it will be easier to keep each of the posts straight. This is cross-posted on fanfiction, but the two pieces will be exactly the same (for this arc—there might be some hanky-panky I only post here in the next arc due to the Terms and Agreements of fanfiction.net, but I will let you know as soon as that happens!).  
> The points of view will continue to jump around from chapter to chapter, though the rest of them retain one “voice” through each individual chapter (with one minor exception, though I’ll talk more about that when we get there). I had intended this past chapter to only have one point of view, like the rest, but some of the expansions impeded that goal and I wanted to add some of Kon’s voice for those who wouldn’t be continuing on. Both of these next two parts focus on Tim and Kon, however there are Jason and Dick centric sections down the road! Originally speaking I had intended on switching back and forth between the two couples every section, but I felt that this way was better.   
> Feel free to ask questions if you have them! Though, as a writer I have the prerogative to not answer them for fear of spoilers. I tried my best to explain certain quirks and things of the mythos as I went, but this is also my story so I already know all of the ins and outs of why everything happens. I will say that I have a tendency of leaving off on cliffhangers between chapters so I ask that you refrain from judging my decisions until you’ve had a chance to read the pieces as a whole. I like to believe that I am a very realistic writer in the sense that not everything is sunshine and roses, and my characters deal with some tough decisions as they go.  
> This last little chapter takes place just about a week after the last chapter, after everything else has more or less gone back to normal, and acts as both a epilogue for this section and a prologue for basically the rest of the story.  
> Once again, I greatly appreciate the support and patience that you have given me, and I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it!

“Huh,” Dick blinked. “That would explain it.”

He reread the screen a fifth and sixth time, just to make sure he hadn’t missed something, before he hit the print button on the top corner of the screen and deleted the computer’s history for the previous two hours. Bruce had asked him to run that week’s set of blood work for the family (just routine stuff to make sure they had a head start on anything that went wrong), and Dick hadn’t thought twice about it until the alarm started going off about half way through Tim’s screening.

It took three and a half minutes for the computer’s history to clear before he was folding the results into his back pocket and taking the stairs up and out of the Batcave two at a time. He thought about taking the printer and setting it on fire—just to be Batman-grade thorough—but he didn’t think anybody would stoop that low to spy on him, and it wasn’t like he was planning on hiding what he’d found out for very long. He just…needed to figure out how to break the news without Tim killing him or having a heart attack from the shock…

Yeah… That was it.

Part of Dick’s mind raced ahead into the what-if scenarios at a hundred miles an hour, while the other lingered back in front of the computer, trying to process what he’d just seen.

Dick was happy—hell, he was _ecstatic_ —he just…wasn’t sure if all of the other parties involved would feel the same way. Sure, they all knew it was coming one day— _Hal_ knew it was coming one day, for Superman’s sake—but Tim had a tendency to plan out his life, down to the very last detail, and Dick was pretty sure he hadn’t planned for this.

Not yet anyway.

Even with everything going on, he would have told Dick or Jason about it—certainly wouldn’t have let Bruce or Dick run the blood tests and find out in such an impersonal way if he had his suspicions or was expecting it. _He wouldn’t do that_ , Dick shook his head as he took the last couple of stairs up to the clock’s door. _He’d want us—all of us—to be a part of this. Tim isn’t one to keep things from the family._

And that little fact came as both reassurance and a point of contention for Dick, because on the one hand, it helped solidify his theory that Tim didn’t know and wasn’t keeping them out of the loop on purpose; but on the other hand, it also solidified his theory that Tim didn’t know, and that meant that Dick was going to have to be the one to tell him.

And Dick couldn’t just… _not_ tell him—not with the lives they lived. It was too dangerous for Tim to be out on patrol in this condition (especially on his own), and he’d need to cut back on the time he put into Wayne Enterprises so he could take better care of himself for awhile. Not to mention all of the preparation they needed to tend to…

“Hey, Jay?” he called out as he stepped into the sitting room and let the Clock Face fall back closed behind himself. “Are you here?”

“…Yeah,” Jason’s response came after a minute and Dick redirected his course to the kitchen without a second thought. “You ready to go?”

“Um…not quite.”

“Not quite?” Jason furrowed his eyebrows, and jumped a bit when Dick came around the corner and into sight. He was over by the sink, washing the dishes that had piled up in the sink in Alfred’s absence throughout the day, but he craned his head around to hear Dick better (and so that he wasn’t yelling into the open window over top of the sink).

“Yeah, not quite,” Dick repeated himself, sidling up behind Jason and pressing a lingering kiss to the back of the taller man’s neck as his hands slipped up underneath the waist band of his shirt and onto the warm skin of his back underneath.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Jason hummed, leaning back into the touch as he turned off the water and reached for a nearby dishtowel to dry his hands. “What’s going on?”

“Well…” Dick mused, mulling over whether or not he should say anything because it really wasn’t his place, but then again, he had no idea how to tell Tim, and Jason was usually better at these types of things when Tim was involved (and he wasn’t being a total dick about it)…so… “Tim’s pregnant.”


End file.
